5 Scandivanian homes where you can maximise long summer days

Summer may be short in Scandinavia but the days seem to stretch forever. Denmark has some of the best beaches in Northern Europe, while the Swedish countryside is dotted with lakes and rolling hills – perfect for unwinding away from the humdrum of the city. Here are five Scandinavian homes for sale where you can soak up the endless daylight.

1930s fixer-upper designed by Josef Frank

Via ESNY

Austrian-born architect and designer Josef Frank may have been one of the fathers of Swedish Modernism yet he only built six villas in the country, five of which are in Falsterbo on Sweden’s south-western tip. One of these has just come up for sale. Villa Wehtje follows an irregular, U-shaped plan – a hallmark of Frank’s reaction against the standardisation of puritanical early Modernist interiors. He preferred a more relaxed approach that responded to the peculiarities of a site. Built in 1936, the house has had the same owner since 1946 and is in need of renovation work. It sits within a Japanese garden – equipped with a Frank-designed playhouse – a stone’s throw from the beach.

Functionalist Danish home by Arne Jacobsen in Øresund

Via Lutzau

Own ‘the dream of the modern lifestyle’ with this Functionalist home designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1932. The three-bedroom Copenhagen property is part of the Bellevue Teatret complex in Klampenborg – a northern suburb of the city that the Danish architect master-planned. Restored to its pre-war best, the home includes cultivated gardens, a tennis court and swimming pool. It is minutes from the Øresund coast, where Jacobsen also designed lifeguard towers and a seaside theatre…

Private island compound in Sweden

via Residence Real Estate

Grötskär is a 242,000-acre parcel of land that forms part of the Stockholm Archipelago. The island has a natural bay that almost divides it in half, with a Modernist house designed by Jordens Arkitekter tucked into the north part of the outcrop. The practice built the simple, five-bedroom villa in 2009 and it’s replete with floor-to-ceiling windows, an open layout and custom cabinetry throughout. Venture down to the water’s edge and there’s also an additional one-bedroom guesthouse and sauna on the island’s pier.

Contemporary Danish villa in Vedbæk

Via Lutzau

This sleek contemporary villa in Denmark’s coastal town of Vedbæk was originally built in 1986 but the three-bedroom Scandinavian home was given a complete overhaul in 2010. It looks pretty modest from the outside but step through the villa’s doors and it unfurls as a series of sweeping open volumes.

A glass-capped forest home in Sweden

Via Residence Fastighetsmäkleri

Residents at Villa Himlen (or ‘heaven’) in Lerum, near Gothenburg, can gaze up at the trees and soak up the views of Lake Aspen from its transparent third-floor chamber, designed for entertaining. Living quarters fill the two lower floors of the four-bedroom forest home, which has extra-tall ceilings and huge windows throughout, as well as several private terraces that look onto the woodlands.